pause

Keeping this blog is enjoyable. Scrolling posts akin to retracing steps along a bread crumb trail in the woods... (if the bread crumbs could remain uneaten and preserved somehow).

Here is a pause though. Months without posts, the first time this has happened since I began three-miles-an-hour in 2010. 

The last four years have seen me move 6 times, from a rented flat, a room in my siblings house to rooms in friends houses. When I relocated to Derbyshire in 2018 it was with no work and few connections, it takes time to land in a community and for contacts and opportunities to emerge and then - PANDEMIC. Lockdown. Everything I'd begun to build in terms of art and freelance work canceled.

The stress of this has caught up with me and I'm in low battery mode while working on securing paid work and stable housing. Little did I know when packing up my Leytonstone flat in August 2018 that the boxes would remain stacked up and waiting in the dark for four years.

So I've slipped with three-miles-per-hour but will pick up the thread somewhere down the line.

Had a brilliant holiday in Scotland this May. Here are The Kelpies - the largest equine sculptures in the world. Awe inspiring and worth a visit - a happy memory from 2022!

settled/busy

Within days of moving to Derbyshire people began to well meaningly ask if I'd settled yet. This question comes up repeatedly and I'm always struck by its oddness. My answer is no, not yet and I experience an urge to explain myself to the questioner, to make the 'no' better somehow... 

I'm living in temporary rental accommodation with most of my belongings in storage, so nine months after moving I've yet to unpack. I'll be moving again in June and again a year and a half after that - into my own home at that point all going to plan. I've yet to find regular work in the region and consequently am not feeling greatly connected to where I live. Finding my feet with no idea what the future holds.

In all of this unsettledness, I'm positive about my move and feel at home in Derbyshire. I know that everything will work out and am giving myself two years before I ask the settled question. That feels realistic.

So world, please resist asking if I'm settled. Feel free to ask 'how's it going?'

Something else I'm noticing is being congratulated on being busy. Busy is at epidemic proportions, is busy a good hiding place? An excuse? A trophy? 

The major drive of moving from London to Derbyshire is the opportunity to invent a world where I plant a garden with edible and medicinal plants and learn how to prepare them. A world where I home a rescue dog and take long rambling walks... I've knitted a blanket for my dog, and keep it as a talisman to give substance to this particular dream. This move is also about developing my art practice, with time to reflect and wonder, space for insight and uncertainty, to allow things to unfold in their own good time. Busy can take a hike!